Contentions

Today Jerusalem Postreports that Israeli forces shut down three Hamas charities: “A girls club, a school, and the headquarters of the Solidarity charity.” Witnesses said troops confiscated computers, documents, cash and furniture,” the Post reports.

Doubtless there will be those who chalk this up to the unremitting cruelty of the Zionist war machine. And indeed, it is not a small problem that Hamas, in addition to killing, maiming, and orphaning innocent Israelis, also provides services to the Palestinian population, not just in Gaza but also in the West Bank, in a way that makes it nearly impossible to track exactly which funds are used for terror, and which not. But even their non-terror activities are often clearly deployed in the support of atrocity: By giving lifelong benefits to the families of suicide bombers, for example, or by running schools that preach terror and jihad; or by using the charities as front organizations for the flow of weapons and arms — the entire organization is built to ensure a perpetual flow of death.

The obvious solution, which has been adopted by the U.S. and other countries, is to illegalize the organization as a whole, raid its charities, shut its services, close it down. Most of these services should be provided by the Palestinian Authority’s government or by non-terrorizing organizations. According to a report in Haaretz today, the IDF has put Hamas’ civilian infrastructure in its sites. Terror needs money to survive; it can be stopped only when we do whatever is necessary to stop the flow.